


Interest

by orphan_account



Series: Conflicts of Interest [2]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Episode: s17e23 Heartfelt Passages, Episode: s18e15 Know it All, Heartbreak, SPOILERS ABOUND
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 10:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15313848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Sad Self-Destructive Barba is self-destructive and sad after Olivia Benson broke his heart. A continuation of the backstory/headcanon set up in "Conflicts." Major spoilers for S17: Heartfelt Passages and S18: Know It All.Continues with a casefic-ish excursion where Season 19 never happened (or happened very differently) in "Some Words I Never Told You."





	Interest

“Hypothetically,” Barba began, pouring himself his third tumbler of scotch for the night as he sat at Rita Calhoun’s kitchen island, the last guest remaining from a small gathering of members of their Harvard Law cohort, “ _hypothetically_ , if an ADA gave a strung-out witness a “loan” to ensure the witness was able to testify in court —“

“Give me twenty bucks,” Calhoun said, kicking the dishwasher shut.

“This is a hypothetical conversation between two lawyers, one who’s been getting threats from an unknown source.” He sipped the scotch, letting it soothe his tingling throat and chest, probably an ill-advised move in light of the cough he’d been nursing for more than a week. “If five years ago an ADA —“

“Give me twenty bucks,” Calhoun repeated.

Barba stood and, taking an extra second to find his footing, removed his wallet from his back pocket. He handed Calhoun a $20 bill, and then returned to his seat.

“Good,” she said. “Now you have me on retainer. Attorney-client privilege applies. Spill. Tell me everything.”

“Well.” He took a half-labored breath, cleared his throat, and stared into his scotch. “Five years ago, in Brooklyn, I gave a witness a “loan” knowing she’d use it for a fix, and —“

“I didn’t hear you say _knowing_.”

“Right. We put away a guy who raped and murdered two of his cousins after years of terrorizing his family, one of the more gruesome crimes I’ve seen in my career. My witness died of an OD that night. The defendant terrorized his family for years, decades even, before we got him.”

“You paid off a witness. That’ll get the verdict overturned and you disbarred.”

“Thanks for your moral support.”

“You don’t look so good, Raf.” She patted his shoulder. “You look like shit.”

“Again, thanks.”

“Somebody’s threatening to tell the Bar about what you did?”

“No. ‘Somebody’ is threatening to have me killed. Probably related to the corrections officers SVU’s dealing with now.”

“You’re not worried? You should have Benson put a security detail on you if this is about an SVU case.”

“When they want you dead, when they _really_ want you dead, they don’t send you letters or voicemails or come at you on the courthouse steps first. When they really want you dead, they kill you.”

“You’re right.”

“Say that again. I want to record you telling me I’m right for future reference.” Barba picked up his phone, a teasing gesture, but quickly noticed multiple text messages from Detective Carisi. His heart jumped into his throat as he read the first: shots fired at Munson’s house, where Benson and Dodds had been helping his wife and children leave safely. 

“What —“ Calhoun started to say.

“Wait,” Barba snapped, harsh, almost shouting the single word.

Dodds had been shot. He’d made it through surgery. Carisi and Rollins were heading back to the precinct. The final messages from Carisi: Dodds was dead following an unexpected post-surgical blood clot. Carisi had wanted to go with Benson. He had more experience with domestic violence calls from his Staten Island days, especially with unlawful imprisonment. He should have gone. 

_I’m sorry,_ Barba typed. _Might not have been any difference. Let me know about the funeral. And come talk to me about working as an ADA when you get the chance._ He didn’t ask about Benson. 

“Raf, what happened?”

“SVU lost a detective. Dodds, the commissioner’s son. He and Benson were on a domestic violence call, trying to get this asshole’s wife and kids out of the house.” 

“That’s rough. I’m sorry.”

“I should go,” he said, pushing the half-finished tumbler towards Calhoun.

“This is Munson, the C.O., isn’t it?”

“Doesn’t affect me.”

“They’re probably the ones threatening to kill you.”

“They won’t have me killed, it’s too risky. But they will — I’m telling you this as my attorney — tell McCoy that I gave money to a witness and I’m still giving some money every couple of months to her sick mother and teenage daughter so they don’t have to suffer, to make sure they don’t fall behind on rent, to make sure the daughter has no reason to drop of out of school."

“You’re a good guy, Rafael,” Calhoun said, walking with him to her door, “you’re a good guy who’s going to get disbarred.”

Barba shrugged. “I’ll come work for you as a paralegal. I’ll sit outside your office and annoy you every day.”

“We’ll see what happens. I’ll fight for you.”

“For twenty bucks?”

“We’re going soft in our middle age, you and me.”

“Sure.”

“Me defending you for $20 over an idiotic decision you made five years ago, you still nursing a broken heart. Look at us.”

Barba rolled his eyes.

“You going to see if she’s all right?” Calhoun prompted.

“Who?” Barba asked, letting exasperation seep into his voice.

“I asked you last year what was up with you and Benson, and I got you drunk enough that you admitted you wanted to be with her but it was a huge conflict of interest.”

“I remember. Good night, Rita.”

“It must suck to see her with the head of IAB now.”

He flipped her off. She laughed.

“You want my honest opinion?” Calhoun asked.

“No.”

“I’m your attorney of record now. You get my honest opinion whether you like it or not.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Rita. I don’t want to hear it.”

“You’re ten years younger than him, you’re living this life where “vacation” is somewhere you go alone, where —“

“Rita.”

“You’re like me.”

“I know.” Tucker was ostensibly the better option because Benson had a kid, and he’d been married before, in a relationship where he was the reliable spouse, and he’d always wanted kids, while Barba was still afraid of toddler vomit and still clenched his fists whenever he was forced to remember his own father. Benson had every right to make the decision she made, but what got to him, what _hurt_ was that the reason she’d given him was the conflict of interest. 

She’d promised him that she’d moan his name in his ear as soon as that conflict of interest no longer existed. 

If his observation was correct, then she’d lied: she’d lied to protect his feelings, maybe, but still. _Still._

As soon as he was out of Calhoun’s building, he removed a cigarette and lighter from the inside pocket of his trenchcoat and took a long drag, breathing out into the still-chilly April air. He’d quit well over ten years ago, for a romantic partner who’d hated the smell, but after the St. Fabiola’s case, he’d started buying a pack on Saturday mornings, smoking most of it over the weekend, popping Excedrin and gulping down hot coffee for the ensuing withdrawal headaches on Monday and Tuesday, and finishing off the pack by the end of the work week. A pack a week was better than a pack a day, he rationalized. 

_I’m going to tell Lucia you’re smoking again,_ came the text from Rita before he ducked into the subway.

—

Carisi and Rollins took it upon themselves to investigate the death threats, and before long they had a name — Felipe Heredio — but no motive. They said they’d see him at the bar after Dodds’ funeral and would update him if they found Heredio.

Of course he joined them there even though Benson — in her dress blues, her face, her eyes still wracked with grief, with guilt — was there raising a glass with Tucker. Barba had to make an appearance, because this wasn’t about him: it was about Dodds, a detective who’d died in the line of duty, in the course of a domestic violence call, one of the most dangerous types of calls for first responders, Carisi would tell him after they clinked their double shot glasses in Dodds’ memory.

“You wouldn’t believe how many of these guys in houses out in the boroughs, these “upstanding citizens,” good neighbors, and so on, have unlawful imprisonment charges on their records,” Carisi said. “You wouldn’t believe.”

“How’re you holding up?” Barba asked.

Carisi shook his head. “It was Dodds’ last day on the job. I jumped up first when the call came in. I said I’d go. I don’t know if it would have turned out differently, or —“

“Don’t do that to yourself,” Barba said, averting his eyes when he saw Benson and Tucker on the opposite side of the bar, arms around each other’s waists as they chatted with colleagues. 

“Same.” 

“Detective,” Barba warned.

“Yeah, yeah. None of my business.”

Barba stood to leave, picking up his suit jacket from the back of his chair. “Hey,” he said, impulsively pressing a hand to Carisi’s upper arm and leaning closer, “you want to get out of here? I know a quiet restaurant a few blocks uptown where —“

“Counselor.” Carisi spun around in his chair. “You feeling all right? You want us to put a detail on you?”

“Just catch the guy.”

“You feeling all right?” he said again.

“Yes. You?”

“You’re like a mentor to me,” Carisi said.

“We’ll talk later about you becoming a prosecutor.”

“Yeah.” From the chair, he patted Barba’s arm. “I’ll call you when we bring Heredio in.”

“You do that. Good night, detective.”

—

He identified Heredio in a lineup the next morning, and Rollins and Carisi arranged for a security detail on Barba while they looked into who’d hired Heredio. The day after that, Barba woke up in a cold sweat, his eyes nearly crusted shut, a spindly, hive-like rash forming on his legs and stomach, a dry cough still in his chest. _Olivia’s finally done me in_ , he thought as he told the officer downstairs that he was heading to the urgent care center two blocks up from his apartment. 

His ribs ached. Everything ached.

Walking pneumonia, the doctor said, an infection that earned its nickname because you could walk around with it for weeks and not realize you have it until it punches you in the lungs and makes your immune system go haywire. Barba was sent home with antibiotics, an inhaler, and an order to re-quit smoking. 

As he made himself a cup of tea and prepared to crawl back into bed for a week, a sudden worry crept into his mind: Noah Porter Benson. The kid had asthma, there’d been some concern when he was a baby that his lungs were undeveloped on account of Ellie Porter’s drug problems; he remembered Liv telling him that, he remembered how terrified she’d been when he was exposed to measles.

He groaned as he sunk into the couch with his mug of tea and scrolled through his contacts to find Benson. (For a time, she was always in his “recent calls” list, but not so much anymore.) “Rafa?” she asked immediately. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve got walking pneumonia,” he said.

“Oh. Oh, I’m sorry, when you called, I thought it was — I was worried about you. Carisi told me about the detail. You should have —“

“Rollins and Carisi are taking care of it. I had no reason to tell you. Anyhow, the doctor said I could have been contagious for two weeks. I wanted to call since I know your son —“

“Yes, yes, of course, thank you for telling me. We had pneumonia going around at his nursery school this February, I’ll keep an eye out if he’s coughing more than usual.”

“I remembered when those high school kids with measles —“

“It’s okay, Rafa. Things happen. We’ve learned to be prepared.”

“Good, good.”

“Rafa.” 

“What?” The interjection came out more harsh than he’d intended.

“How are you doing?”

“Other than feeling like I’ve been hit by a shovel lined with a ton of bricks? Fine, thanks.”

“I’ll make sure we lock the Munson case down before I go. He’s claiming he dropped the gun, that Dodds was shot by accident, but you and I know that’s bullshit. We need to figure out which one of Munson’s friends hired Heredio.”

“That’s SVU’s jurisdiction?”

 _Before I go._ Where was she going?

“It’s almost definitely related to one of our cases, and I’d bet my pension it’s the C.O.s. If not them, it’s got to be related to something you’ve prosecuted for us.”

“When are you going on vacation?” he asked, trying to phrase the question as reasonably as possible. 

“Later this summer. We’re going to Paris.”

“I see.”

“Feel better. I’ll see you next week?”

“Probably. I need to meet with you about where we are on Munson.”

“You sure you want to —“

“I’m not letting Munson or his cronies scare me off the case. And he’s not getting away with manslaughter either.”

“I should have stayed in the house with Munson,” Benson said, her voice tearful, barely above a whisper.

“No,” Barba said firmly. 

“I’ve got more than 18 years with SVU, if I’d have gone in, I’d have —“

“Stop. You know better.”

“I do.”

 _Do you know what my life would be like without you in it?_ he wanted to ask, selfishly. 

“I’ll see you Monday,” he told her instead. His ribs still ached with a pain that was simultaneously sharp and dull.

**Author's Note:**

> The plan from here is to (at some point) re-do the “Comeback” plot through a different lens: the events of “Know It All” had higher stakes for Barba, the events of “Flight Risk” happen at the end of Season 18 (we’ll all pretend Benson didn’t do the cruel and outrageous thing she did to get a wife to give up her husband at the end of canon S18, agreed?), and S19 DID NOT HAPPEN beyond episode 1. Similar plot points, but it’ll be different enough from “Comeback” to be worth reading, I think. That makes sense, right? That makes no sense. But still. We’ll see.


End file.
